EDIT: woops, looks like I hit Submit instead of Preview. Uhh I'll be working on finishing the guide soon-ish, stay tuned!EDIT2: woops x2, looks like I never did finish this. And the character file for the particular Blood Mage I based this guide on got wiped. Oh well, at least I managed to finish most of the important parts of the guide

Hey all, your local roguelike ragequitter Nos here. I found this class from Doctornull's Class Pack, and I had so much fun with it I wanted to write a guide.

So let's get down to it. (I'm going to shamelessly copy Cathbald's format cause it looks good to me )

Addon RequirementsDoctornull's Class Pack. Obviously, the guide is written for this class from this addon, so get this.Arcanum Class Pack. Optional, but gives you the Angolwen Academy, which lets you learn + unlock a useful generic tree which I will discuss more in detail below.

There are more addons that I use that I could recommend, but this is a Blood Mage guide, not an addon guide so I'll skip that.

My CredentialsI've been playing Roguelikes since 2011 when I first started with DCSS ver. 0.8 (victory dancing, anyone?). Have won multiple times since in DCSS, ToME, and rogue'lite's like FTL, Binding of Isaac, Dungeons of Dredmor, etc. My goal in ToME is to fill out the Winners Tables, starting with normal difficulty. Obviously, this being an addon class, it won't show up on the Winners Table anyway, but that's fine by me if I get to have OP fun times . Anyway, you can look here if you want to see my table for yourself: https://te4.org/user/7613/wins . With that in mind, this guide is written for Normal difficulty; it could probably work in Nightmare too. As for higher difficulties, I'm sure if you play those regularly you're good enough to not need a guide in the first place, so this guide is also written for newbies out there mainly.

Blood Mage ReasonsYou like casting Corruptor spells for essentially free. Blood Mage's unique passive they get right at level 1 grants them perma-Bloodcasting; what this means is HP is used instead of Vim if you wouldn't have the Vim to cast a spell. Couple that with...You like having tons of HP. Blood Mage has 4 passives which grant +0.5 more life per Con (retroactive, too!). At level 50 my Shalore, of all races, had over 2000 HP! Your large HP pool + perma-bloodcasting = ...You like casting OP Corruptor spells for free. Given that you get a ridiculous amount of HP, the Life cost of spells when Vim runs out is essentially nil. Yes, you can even use that useless waste of Vim, Hexes, as much as you like!You want to make them big spell crit numbers. Blood Grasp and Soul Rot were regularly hitting for over 1000+ near end game for me!You want to give the big middle finger to anti-magic, Gorbat pride in particular. Essentially no Vim costs = F U to Mana burn!You want to destroy those punks Elandar and Argoniel for giving you a hard time on other characters.

Racestl;dr just pick Shalore

Shalore - 5/5: The one I won with. Pretty obvious choice; speed, spell crit stacking, ofc the ever OP Timeless. Just pick this one alreadyCornac - 2/5: Not great. Only reason it's not 1/5 is so you can use the extra cat. point to unlock Heart of Fire, but you really don't need to do that.Skeleton - 2/5: Also not great. The Skeleton tree is very good of course, but you want those infusions.

Everything else: just pick Shalore seriously

Statstl;dr Mag>Con>Dex>Cun (or Cun>Dex depending on drops)STR: Enough for a 1/5 Heavy Armor Training, and any decent gear you may find (16 for Untouchable, namely). Otherwise ignoreDEX: Your dump stat after the Mag/Con is at 60. Crit shrug-off and more accuracy for your melee attacks, which you will mainly use later on anyway when you start stat dumping, are nice to have.CON: You get +2 more life per Con (retroactive!) from your Blood Magic passives. Normally people say this is a trap dump stat, but in this case, get this second (after Mag) definitely.MAG: Your main stat. Need it for that Tier 5 Staff you'll want to twink from the Items Vault, if you're like me lol. Oh, and more spell damage. Obviously.WIL: Not needed. Simply enough.CUN: Your secondary dump stat after DEX is maxed. More crit! Depending on your luck with spell crit items, you may actually want to prioritize this instead of DEX, but you get tons of spell crit from your generic passives anyway so it shouldn't be necessary.

Unlocked Class TreesVim: 3+/1/1/1 early, 5/1/1/1 coreSoul Rot: Bread & butter for a large portion of the game. 3/5 early is good breakpoint for damage, should really 5/5 it though early anyway since you use it so much. Gets outclassed by Blood Grasp later on though; you'll still be using it a lot even then.Vimsense: Prereq for Dark Portal mainly. Still nice for the blight res reduction and creature-sense, if your light radius sucks.Leech: Prereq for Dark Portal. Trash filler skill, definitely don't dump anything here lol.Dark Portal: 1/5 is all you need for getting out of hairy situations (which should be virtually never if you play on Normal, but it's good to have one)

Blood: 1/3+/0/0 early, 3+/5/1/3+ coreBlood Spray: A not-that-great AOE skill early on, it can stay at 1/5 for awhile. 3/5 is a good range breakpoint, 5/5 it eventually as it becomes a core part of your attack cycle and AOE dmg later on (unfortunately the range only ever caps out at 9, not 10)Blood Grasp: Soul Rot's bread, meet butter. Has a nice heal mechanic on a fairly low cooldown, keeping you topped up. 3/5 minimum but 5/5 asap as you'll be using this one a lot too.Blood Boil: It's a self-AOE; you'll mainly want to use it for the slow, and if you're surrounded. Can leave it at 1/5 safely, I 5/5'd it just because I had nowhere else it put those points on the High Peak climb lol.Blood Fury: More spell crit! And some damage bonus that's not really important lol. Unfortunately, you most likely won't have the Vim pool to run this right at level 12, so you can avoid skilling this early on. If you have some +Vim pool items by then though by all means, go for it!

Pyre: 1/1/1/0 early & core. or 0/0/0/0Honestly, this whole tree is mainly just filler for your attack cycle. The range never increases beyond 7 afaik, and the damage is really not that great past early game. You can safely skip this tree if you want and just inject movement in between your Soul Rot/Blood Grasp cooldowns instead.

Balefire Bolt: Really awful skill. It's a DoT, and a weak one at that. Have it as the last skill in your attack cycle; honestly, movement is better than using this skill lmao. One exception is for enemy Bone Shields early on, but you unlock a way to defeat those later on anyway.Searing Beam: At least this one's a bolt, and does good upfront damage! Still, only 7 range and damage is not good in the grand scheme of things. Also an early Bone Shield eater.Voidburn: Probably the most useful skill in this tree, but not by much. It's an AoE slow/damage debuff, with some decent damage thrown in (not good later on like the previous skills though). The projectile travels annoyingly slow.Pyre Gate: 0/5. First of all, the enemy needs to be on fire or diseased. We're not really gonna focus on or have diseases available until late game. And like I said, the other skills in this tree, even though they set on fire, are more turn-wasters, so you probably wouldn't be focusing on trying to catch the enemies on fire anyway. Well, it could be nice to have another gap closer later on for your melee, but Searing Ire already has a 7 turn cooldown maxed that this skill is not really worth the investment.

Trauma: 1+/1/1+/0 or 0/0/0/0 early. 3+/2+/3+/0 coreSearing Ire: Your Rush clone. It uses the old Rush mechanics, so you can't use it targetless as an escape. Sorry! Mainly used later on for getting in range for your 2 melee skills and Poison Storm.Vile Strike: A very low cooldown melee attack. The damage it does itself is not that good; you're mainly looking at the blight/disease res. reduction it gives. 2/5 gives a good breakpoint for duration, even 1/5 is already enough for duration>CD.Twist Vigor: Your 'surprise motherfker!' skill. Steals good physical effects from your target, places your bad physical effects on them. At least 1/5 to get rid of a stun (lvl 30 Spine of the World takes care of the rest), 4/5 later on for more stealage!Reaping Strike: A ranged melee (?) attack. The damage potential is high, but it needs diseases to reach it, so... 0/5

Locked Class TreesBone: 1/1/1/5 asap!Depending on Vim pool items like in the case of Blood Fury, you'll most likely unlock this at level 20 instead of 10. If you do get lucky, definitely try to get Bone Shield up and running ASAP

Bone Spear: Bone Shield prereq. Get rid of the skill icon on your hotbar.Bone Grasp: Bone Shield prereq. Get rid of the skill icon on your hotbar.Bone Nova: Bone Shield prereq. Get rid of the skill icon on your hotbar.Bone Shield: Finally, we're here! One of the Defiler metaclass's signature skills, I would say. It gets utterly annihilated by enemies with multi-element melee attacks though. Aside from that, most of the time, it keeps you alive 100%. 5/5 asap, for sure!

Dark Ritual: More damage for your crits? Yes please! 3/5 if you really have to for a good breakpoint, but you should really just 5/5 this asap since you will be critting. a lot.Corrupted Negation: Your way to deal with those irritating Corruptor/Necromancer types. 2/5 I think? is the breakpoint for 1->3 effects, 4/5 later to remove 5 effects.Corrosive Worm: Filler skill on your way to Poison Storm. Even so, it's a good blight res debuff to use on any particularly annoying boss you may face.Poison Storm: Normally, you'd never use this as a Corruptor, given the self-AoE range and high Vim cost. But you're not a lowly Corruptor, you're a Blood Mage! This skill wipes the floor of any popcorn mobs you may encounter (Gorbat dragon packs, anyone?) If you see more than 3 enemies on the screen, use this. Hell, even against lone rares/bosses, use this, as its damage is so good. 1/5 early but 5/5 later on for sure for more fun (for you, not the enemy! ) disease effects + dmg.

Plague: Don't unlockMy opinion on diseases for Defilers is not very high. First of all, the range of the first skill is so poor compared to the perfect 10 range of Soul Rot/Blood Grasp. Second, it's a DoT when Soul Rot/Blood Grasp kills 99% of things immediately. Not worth putting points in, especially when you have to unlock it in the first place.

Heart of Fire: Dont unlock. Or (conjecture, I never played with this tree personally), 1/5/1/5I didn't unlock this one myself. You already have good trees to spend points on in Bone and Blight, so I don't really see the point. If you really want to, Fiery Aegis and Blazing Rebirth are decent-ish panic options, but you don't focus on the fire-burn needed to maximize them for this build so it's really, really not that good.

Generic TreesShalore: 1+/5/1/5 coreGrace of the Eternals: Global speed! Who doesn't like that, seriously? Doesn't take a turn to use either, so you can safely set it to auto-cast when enemies are visible pretty much. 1/5 is enough, more if you want more uptime on your speedMagic of the Eternals: 1/2 of why people pick Shalore. More crit chance AND even a buff to crit multiplier? Hell yes! 5/5 when you can, but it's not terribly important early game when you don't have good gear to stack your spell crit yet.Secrets of the Eternals: Filler 1/5 skill. Use it, or not. I didn't. Invis does not = invince like other games lol, it's kind of useless in my opinion.Timeless: The other 1/2 of why people pick Shalore. Or maybe more like 3/4, or 4/5, or... yeah the skill's that good. Debuff + cooldown reducer, buff increaser. For some reason though I barely had to use it, just goes to show how OP the Blood Mage really is I guess

Combat Training: 0+/1/1+/0+/0/0 (did I do that right? I read from top left to right then bottom left to right heh)You only really 'need' a 1/5 heavy armor training here, for gear options. The others are not really necessary, I guess Thick Skin would be nice to have but I didn't need it and won anyway. I put 1/5 Combat Accuracy early just to help with accuracy problems; you can probably skip that and save yourself a generic point. 1/5 in Light Armor Training too but that's also another generic point you can save elsewhere.

Blood Magic: 5/1/1/1 early, 5/5/1+/1 coreBlood Mage: Your signature skill, and the reason why you're an evolved superhuman Corruptor! Gives you your built in Lifecasting, at the expense of a small Vim pool (which only really matters for running sustains). Also increases spell crit and gives you flat CON, which is why we 5/5 it. Oh, and the (Retroactive!) +0.5 Life per con.Twist the Knife: More status effects havoc for your melee attacks! Unfortunately, with my playstyle, you're more of a caster than a melee'er early and mid-game, so it can stay at 1/5 for awhile. 5/5 it eventually though since those status effects can really screw over a tough enemy. Also +0.5 Life per con.Armor of Scars: Just 1/5 here is sufficient. You can put more for the cut/disease immunity if you haven't found the godlike Fist/Masochism set which already gives 100% disease immunity. But 1/5 is all you need for the +0.5 Life per con.Horrid Vitality: A pretty bad active skill, but a nice passive +healing factor to have. The regen from the activated part is laughable, so don't use it. 1/5 is all you need. +0.5 Life per con, don't you know already?

Blood Spear: 1/1/1/1 early, or 1/0/0/0. 1+/1+/5/1+ coreBlood Spear: A cool thematic sustain that turns your magical Staff into a disgusting sharp pointy Blood Stick! Gives you a reason to pump CON since it'll now buff your melee staff damage. This is basically a weapon mastery so depending on if you favor melee over my spellslinger style, you may want to put more than 1/5 here.Blood Spite: Gives additional on-hit damage and a tiny insignificant speck of healing. Also, you can steal an enemies healing factor if they're diseased. 1/5 is all you need, I did 2/5 just to increase the duration of the healing curse a bit.Blood Spoil: More on-hit proccing fun! This time, with diseases! Does some cool things with higher talent investment, but can stay at 1/5 for awhile, again depending on if you favor melee or spellslinging. 5/5 eventually though as those status effects are too good to pass up.Blood Spurt: You hit the enemy in a vital spot and make them shoot blood like a firehose! At least, that's what I imagine. Not cool enough to me though, so I leave it at 1/5 though you could put more again based on playstyle.

Hexes: 1/1/1/0You get this for free by taking down those unwashed masses at The Zigur with the Grand Corruptor. So do that. Even so, I find Hexes to be a waste of turns most of the time unless you're fighting some tough boss.

Pacification Hex: Can work as a nice immobilize in the beginning of the fight. Quickly becomes useless after that though as you'll be constantly ticking damage from diseases, so they won't ever really be dazed. Just 1/5.Burning Hex: Now we're talking here. Punishes annoying rares/bosses for using their annoying skills. The burn damage is nothing so don't worry about that part. 1/5Empathic Hex: A cool little attack reflecting hex. Only really needed on rares/bosses hitting you particularly hard. 1/5Domination Hex: Same damage problem as Pacification Hex, so 0/5.

Mana Alchemy: 1/1/1/5 early, 1/5/1/5 coreGet this at the Angolwen Academy. You get one Token to reveal the tree by giving the magic artifact to the apprentice mage outside, and another one to unlock it from Linaniil after talking to her once defeating Urkhiss (sp?).Mana Charge: Increases your mana and mana regen rate. 1/5 just to have some sort of mana regen to use with escort sustains like Premonition without needing a Shimmering ego Staff.Quicken Inscriptions: It'll reduce your inscriptions cooldown and remove the saturation effect. 1/5 early just to get to the last skill (at mastery 0.8 it actually doesn't do anything at 1/5! lol), 5/5 eventuallyGlowing Orb: Trash filler skill on the way to Inscription Mastery. Get rid of the skill icon on the hotbar.Inscription Mastery: The entire reason you unlocked this tree. Basically makes you an ogre, making inscriptions not only scale stronger, BUT also increases duration too! 9 duration damage shields, anyone??? 5/5 ASAP!

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